Free Gift Card Offers (Up To $100 To Popular Stores)

Aug 1, 2017 by Stephen Weyman

I've been touting free gift card offers on this site for a long time now: see here, here, and here. Most of them have been a free $100 gift card to Amazon.ca or another popular Canadian store in return for applying for an awesome credit card that earns you even more free money in cash back or travel rewards.

These credit cards usually also come with no annual fee (at least for the first year) and sometimes a hefty points sign up bonus to boot. Then, after the first year, there is no obligation to continue with the card if you decide it isn't for you. It's really a fantastic deal and one I've taken advantage of several times myself.

Since this has become a pretty regular thing, I thought I should make a permanent page that lists legitimate free gift card offers that I am aware of and will continue to update at the beginning of every month.

Proof That It Works

If you're generally skeptical of these things and think it sounds too good to be true, I can ensure you that it isn't. My family and I have taken advantage of these types of offers many times ourselves and received our gift cards as promised every time. I've used them to purchase things like a new bed set for my daughter, a pregnancy pillow for my wife, gas for my car, and a few technology items as well. Let me tell you, it was wonderful not to have to spend any money out of pocket on those things!

After taking advantage of my first free $100 gift card offer more than 4 years ago, I decided to partner with RateSupermarket directly to help bring these offers to you. Now, they notify me whenever a new deal becomes available so I can then pass it along to you.

I've even met RateSupermarket's employees in person at a conference in Toronto, spoken with their founder on the phone, and I correspond with them regularly by email. In the time I've been doing this, I’ve only had one complaint from someone about not receiving their gift card. I was able to sort that issue out quickly with RateSupermarket and the gift card was delivered as promised.

Current Deals

Here’s a list of currently active gift card deals as of August 2017. These aren’t limited to credit card deals either - if I find other great free gift card deals I’ll add them here as well. I’m listing them roughly in order from best to worst.

Many of these deals only last for 1 month, so make sure you apply quickly so you don't miss out.

1) $100 Gift Card + $20 Worth of PC Points + No Fee

The ever popular President's Choice Financial MasterCard is running a gift card promotion this month where you can get a $100 gift card in addition to the usual 20,000 PC Points you get for signing up that is worth an extra $20 in free groceries.

This card is basically a 1% cash back card but the primary way to redeem your rewards is for groceries, not cash.

The good thing though is that with the World Elite version of the card, you get 3x the rewards at Loblaws owned grocery stores that participate in the PC Plus points program as well as Shoppers Drug Mart, PC Travel, and PC Mobile. There's also 30 points per litre awarded when you use your card at Esso, which is equivalent to a nice 3 cents per litre discount on gas.

2) Free Amazon.ca Gift Cards With Swagbucks

Some people would like to avoid using credit cards, and that’s fair if the temptation is too much and you aren’t able to pay them off at the end of the month. Fortunately, there is another great way to earn free Amazon.ca gift cards and that is through Swagbucks.

Swagbucks is an online rewards program that rewards you for doing fun online activities like regular web searches (using their search engine), shopping for products you might be buying anyway, watching videos, playing games, answering polls, and more.

This can be a great activity to do when you’re bored or doing something else mindless like watching TV. Many people save their bucks up throughout the year and then redeem them just before Christmas to buy stuff from Amazon as free Christmas gifts.

3) Cash Back For Shopping Online

The only thing better than a free gift card is free cash, so I thought I would put a mention here about cash back websites that you can use to earn money back when shopping at many popular online Canadian stores. The amount of you earn ranges from store to store and can be as little as 1% all the way up to 25% or more (usually during special promotions).

I could go into more details here, but I've written a great article about the best cash back websites for Canadians that explains exactly how it all works and talks about how I've personally earned more than $1200 in cash back since I started doing it myself. Click the Get This Deal button below to read that article.

More Awesome Credit Cards

If there aren't a lot of awesome free gift card deals out there this month or nothing strikes your fancy, there are still a ton of top notch credit cards you can apply for right now that will earn you a ton of rewards. They also often come with big sign up bonuses and tons of other perks. For instance, the best cash back credit card in Canada right now gives you 2% cash back on all your purchases with no earning caps, tiers, or restrictions. In addition, they give you $100 in cash as a sign up bonus and waive the annual fee for the first year so you can try it to see if you like it. I have been using the top card for my everyday spending for years now and it has been fantastic. In 2016 alone, I have received $1,253 worth of cash back!

I'm not sure what could be causing this John. I just tested the application process myself right now using the Chrome web browser and I was able to get through to the application form just fine. If you are experiencing this problem on the TD application form itself, then you should contact TD support if you still want to go through with it. If you are experiencing it on the RateSupermarket page, you can contact their support as follows:

Our representatives are available to assist you Monday through Friday 8am- 8pm EST and Saturday 830am-4pm EST. Call us at: 1-866-462-4779.

The first thing I would suggest trying before contacting support is doing the application on a different web browser or computer to see if that works.

It appears you are correct on this. I had received notice that the TD Visa Infinite was receiving a change so you could now redeem your points for travel with any travel provider but at a reduced rate. Somehow I confused that reduced rate with being the regular rate and I thought that redeeming through Expedia was double that rate. It turns out I was incorrect on that, which is a very big oversight and for that I apologize.

To anyone who has already applied for the TD First Class Visa Infinite using the above link expecting to receive $400 in rewards, please contact me so I can apologize personally and try to make it up to you.

I have now corrected the details of the offer so it is correct at $200 worth of travel at Expedia for the Infinite card and $100 worth of travel for the Platinum card.

Hi Stephen,
Hunting for the best credit cards promos here and there seems to be a good way to save some money and fees, but doesn't it hurt my credit score? I heard that frequently changing credit cards will lower my score. Any thoughts? Thanks!

It's true that applying for a credit card (or any credit for that matter) will usually immediately lower your score by a little bit. However, your score will quickly bounce back in a matter of months as long as you continue to use your credit responsibly and not have way too much of it (hundreds of thousands of dollars). I personally follow the rule of thumb of about 2 new credit card applications a year just to be safe but there are people who do more than 10 a year without too much trouble.

If you want to see how it impacts your score, you can buy the credit monitoring or just pay to check your score every so often from one of the credit bureaus. It's usually a small price to pay when compared to the amount of freebies and rewards you are getting from the credit cards.

I think for TD Infinite Visa you can apply on www.tdcanadatrust.com or call TD Visa directly TD will honor you the deal, etc...it used to be better a few years back TD Travel Gold than they changed to Infinite and I switched to RBC Cathay Pacific.

BMO AirMiles has a good offer now and Rogers Mastercard isn't too bad?? There's no built-in currency exchange fee BUT I wish the SPG AMEX US has same rules & rates as CAN, that deal would be sweet!!

Yes, TD might honour you the deal if you asked them about it directly. However, they definitely aren't offering it to all customers right on their own website.

The Rogers MasterCard isn't bad if you use a Rogers service to waive the annual fee and then redeem your points as cash back (I heard this is possible even though they don't advertise it on the card's site). It doesn't have any good features other than the high cash back rate and the good currency exchange rate though.

The BMO Air Miles World Elite is a decent card for sure.

However, none of the cards you've mentioned have any big gift card or cash back offers going on with them right now, which is what this particular article is all about.

I would like to touch on the Swagbucks topic, it is a really hit and miss program and in all seriousness seems a 'tad' on the shady side. If you read the TOS and all their other rules and regulations and you abide by all of them they will still close your account down without any notice or explanation. Then they just stop replying back to you at all meanwhile all your accumulated points, cash rewards, and cards are gone, Poof! They will Not give you a reason why your account was terminated or what you have allegedly done wrong and they definitely will Not give you any form of your credits, cards or anything else they will just steal it! Google how many people have had their accounts closed down for no reasons or explanations. You will be shocked! Prior to this I had the one Swagbucks account for years and never had an issue, accumulated my points etc and it's all gone, stolen from Swagbucks after all the hard work and time I put into their site, FYI majority of their surveys do not work or the videos, etc. everything is a hit and miss! Basically, you are working and investing hours upon hours to have everything stolen from you! There are other shadier websites like these thieves and there are possibly a few respectable companies out there that won't scam you out of your hard work, haven't found one yet, but still looking and hoping.

Thanks for sharing the warning. I hear you that it isn't a perfect program. I have heard some complaint threads about offers not working as they should all the time. It does sound hit and miss. Most of the time when I do something, the points seem to be awarded as they should be but occasionally something doesn't show up. I'm not a heavy user though.

If they truly are shutting people's accounts down for no reason though, that's terrible. They probably have a lot of people trying to cheat the system though because if you figure out ways to game the system they are essentially forced to give out free money.

Hi Stephen:
Thanks for another great article and money saving tip. I applied for the MBNA credit card on August 17 (got approved immediately). I received the $100 Best Buy gift card via email today (August 25). Very impressed, as the linked site indicated that it typically took 6-8 weeks to get the gift card. In fact, I have the gift card before I have received the credit card in the mail!

It looks like they JUST took it offline so it must have just ended. It's unusual for a promo to end mid-month but it does happen sometimes. That looks to be the case here. I've removed it from the list, thanks.

It's possible there was a problem with the click tracking and they're having a hard time tracing back your application to their website. Did they give you any details at all when you called as to what the trouble was?